The distribution of the ‘Because We Care’ Education Cash Grant (ECG) by the Government started in Region 2 last week. Parents will get $19,000 for each child, of whom there are 172,000 countrywide, costing approximately $3.2 billion. There is no restriction on how the money is to be spent. The project was started by the PPP/C in 2014 at $10,000 for each child. It was discontinued by the APNU+AFC in 2015 and has now been restored by the PPP/C Government.
I caught a television news clip of a portion of the event. Tagewantee Dollarie was interviewed and expressed her gratitude for the help. She explained that she is the sole breadwinner for her grandson. She had been receiving social assistance, which was stopped abruptly and without explanation. She started relating her story quietly, with dignity, emphasizing how helpful the grant would be for her grandson. But when she began to talk about him, what Grade he was in, how well he was doing, and that his father had killed his mother and then committed suicide, the tears flowed, even though she bravely continued the interview. Few who watched this brief episode could have sustained dry eyes or avoided a lump in their throats. There are many similar stories of hardship, in every single community, all across Guyana, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the floods.
The ECG comes in the midst of significant developments in US economic policy for which many in the US have been struggling for decades. Having regard to stagnant wages, disparities in income, the increasing wealth gap and increasing general and child poverty in the US since the 1970s, it would not be hyperbolic to describe the Biden Administration’s economic and poverty alleviation policies as revolutionary. One significant element, coincidentally, is the Child Tax Credit. Its effect is a maximum US$300 payment a month to most American families for each child. It is estimated that it will cut child poverty in half in the US.
One of the most important obstacles in the past to social security, or social help, or assistance in the form of cash grants or otherwise, has been the reactionary excuses oppressors have used for centuries to sustain their oppression of the enslaved, indentured, poor and disadvantaged, which is today referred to as the dependency syndrome. The principle is simple – if you help the poor to improve their condition, they will become dependent on that help and lose the initiative to help themselves. This theory was not only confined to conservatives and reactionaries. It has held sway over many who have themselves, by their own efforts, made successful lives. They argue that if only ‘those people’ would not complain, would work, rather than rely on ‘charity,’ or ‘handouts,’ they would succeed.
The evidence in recent years has smashed the myth of the dependency syndrome and destroyed the arguments of its advocates. In the US, where in the past Republicans and conservative Democrats have supported the dependency syndrome, only some rabid holdouts remain. President Reagan had popularized the dependency syndrome by infamously railing against the ‘welfare queens.’ President Clinton, wrenching the Democratic Party to right of centre, applied the dependency syndrome by imposing onerous conditionalities on the recipients of social security. However, most progressives have been buoyed by the great success of the ‘bolsa familia’ programme implemented in Brazil by the past Lula Governments which, by cash grants, which have substantially reduced poverty. Since then, these programmes have been successfully implemented to varying degrees all over the world. As Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, said (NYT 2021-07-16) “…economists have assembled a great deal of data pointing to the benefits of public spending, especially aid to families with children.”
For the above reasons, I was horrified to read a letter in SN of 2021-07-15 written by Mr. Aubrey Norton (“PPP’s cash grant is both inadequate and ill conceived”) in which he criticized the “payout for every child in public schools.” Mr. Norton is a longtime leader in APNU+AFC, ostensibly socialist in orientation, who is or was a high official in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. I do not seek to engage Mr. Norton on his political criticisms of the PPP/C Government that the programme “fits into the PPP’s scheme to create dependence rather than increasing our people’s capacity to earn and live decent and fulfilling lives….”, or that “the PPP’s use of state resources creates dependencies to dominate and control the lives of the people of Guyana.” These are matters for the Government to respond to.
However, I do take exception to the idea that the ECG programme, by itself, creates dependency of any kind. For Mr. Norton to join with the most conservative, reactionary, politicians worldwide to perpetuate this now largely discredited, backward, dangerous and fallacious nonsense, that cash grants actually create any kind of dependency whatsoever, whether on politicians or anyone else, is quite unbelievable. If this is the motivation of the PPP/C Government, it will certainly fail. And if this is the kind of extremist views, plucked out of the dungeon of Mr. Norton’s political mind, that he will bring to the PNCR if he wins the leadership, then God help us.
This column is reproduced, with permission, from Ralph Ramkarran’s blog, www.conversationtree.gy
